Verizon’s Board Members Push Armies of H-1B Outsourcing Workers into Many U.S. Compan

Verizon’s Board Members Push Armies of H-1B Outsourcing Workers into Many U.S. Companies

October 4, 2018
Neil Munro

Verizon’s 13 board members outsourced many jobs at many other companies before launching their joint campaign to outsource 44,000 Verizon jobs, including at least 2,500 computer jobs to low-wage Indian visa-workers.

The Verison computer jobs are being outsourced to Infosys, an Indian company accused of undercutting American workers and discriminating against black and white Americans in favor of Indian nationals. Breitbart News reported:

Verizon executives claim the computer outsourcing will only impact 1,000 Verizon workers, but employees who spoke to Breitbart News say that the outsourcing will hit 5,000 workers eventually, as 44,000 jobs are shed.

Verizon spokesperson Rich Young told Breitbart News in a Tuesday statement that he does not know “where these numbers are coming from,” and called the estimate “nothing more than fake news.”

On Oct. 3, the Wall Street Journal confirmed the 44,000 figure, adding “a spokesman for the company confirmed the scope”:

Employees eligible for the severance packages were offered three weeks’ pay for each year of service up to 60 weeks.

The same day the offer was announced, Verizon notified many information technology employees that they were being transferred to Indian outsourcing giant Infosys Ltd. INFY -2.24%▲ as part of a $700 million outsourcing agreement.

Verizon is transferring about 2,500 employees in the U.S. and overseas to Infosys. Those employees aren’t eligible for severance payments and won’t receive their 2018 bonus if they are offered a job at Infosys and don’t accept it, according to materials given to the employees.

Verizon’s outsourcing strategy relies heavily on the many Indian outsourcing companies and their armies of H-1B and L-1 visa-workers.

These Indian companies work with American CEOs to transfer college-graduate jobs to low-wage visa-workers in the United States and then gradually move those the jobs back into India. Few of the outsourced American college-graduates are hired by the Indian firms, either as employees or subcontractors.

Overall, the H-1B program keeps a population of roughly 700,000 lower-wage foreign college-graduates in U.S. jobs. The H-1B visas last three years, but can be extended indefinitely once a company requests a green card for the H-1B worker. Each year, roughly 120,000 new H-1B workers are imported for U.S. jobs, and roughly 55,000 get green-cards to stay in the United States.

The board members of Verizon also work for many other companies which have used the H-1B visa program, according to federal data collected by MyVisaJobs.com and H1Bfacts.com.

Verizon board member Gregory Weaver is the former chairman and CEO of Deloitte, which has asked for 23,000 foreign visa-workers to replace American business-school and technology graduates since 2015.

Roughly one-third of the H-1B visa requests are approved by the autopilot provisions of the H-1B law. But each visa lasts for three years, so a request for 3,000 visas likely delivers 1,000 H-1B foreign workers for three years.

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The data also how many foreign workers are being allowed by their employer to file for green cards. For example, from 2015 to 2017, Deloitte asked for 22,432 H-1B workers and sponsored 966 foreign workers for green cards so they can stay in the United States.

Lowell McAdam is the chairman of Verizon. His CEO, Hans Vestberg, was born in Sweden, according to the company data:

Before joining Verizon in April 2017, Vestberg served for six years as president and CEO of Ericsson, a multinational networking and telecommunications equipment and services company headquartered in Sweden that provides 35 percent of the world’s 2G, 3G and 4G mobile network infrastructures … Born in Hudiksvall, Sweden, Vestberg earned a Bachelor of Business Administration degree from the University of Uppsala, Sweden, in 1991.

According to MyVisaJobs.com, “Ericsson Inc. has filed 1797 labor condition applications for H1B visa and 583 labor certifications for green card from fiscal year 2015 to 2017.”

In June 2018, Vestberg attended a meeting of elite CEOs and investors, while wearing a shirt carrying the slogan “No Nationality.”

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Board member Mark Bertolini is the chairman and CEO of Aetna Inc., which has already outsourced much work to Infosys, which is based in India.

Infosys reported:

Infosys has played a significant role in Aetna’s journey, working alongside Aetna during the last couple of years. As a strategic partner to Aetna, Infosys provides a wide range of services ranging from business consulting, application development, validation and testing services, systems integration, program management, requirements management, architecture services, maintenance, enterprise solutions services, and business process outsourcing.

Infosys has been the largest user of U.S.-based H-1B workers, many of whom also transfer other college-graduate jobs back to India.

When they ask for H-1B visas, companies are required to state how much they will pay their visa-workers. But there are many allegations — and some evidence — that many H-1Bs are paid far less than the promised wages:

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Board member Kathryn Tesija is a former Vice President at Target Corp., which has tried to replace Americans workers with almost 400 H-1B visa-workers since 2014.

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Board member Gregory Wasson is the former President and Chief Executive Officer of Walgreens Boots Alliance, Inc. That firm has tried to import 121 foreign graduates since 2014, including 74 pharmacists, according to MyVisaJobs.com:

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Board member Melanie Healey is a former group president of The Procter & Gamble Company. In 2003, the company transferred 1,850 company employees to an American outsourcing firm, Hewlett Packard. The company also outsourced more internal work to IBM and Accenture.

In turn, those three companies import many lower-cost H-1B visa-workers to do the outsourced work for many additional companies:

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Verizon’s board also includes three bankers whose investments rise as U.S.-based companies cut their payroll costs by transferring work to visa-workers or foreign graduates. Verizon’s website reports:

Clarence Otis, Jr. Former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Darden Restaurants, Inc. … He has served as a director of The Travelers Companies, Inc. since August 2017 and VF Corporation since 2004. He has also been a director of 138 funds within the MFS Mutual Funds complex since March 2017.
Richard Carrión is Executive Chairman of Popular, Inc., a diversified bank holding company.

Verizon is already using several hundred foreign workers who were imported via the H-1B program:

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Board member Rodney Slater is a former cabinet secretary in President Bill Clinton’s administration. He now is a partner at Squire Patton Boggs LLP, a D.C.-based lobbying firm.

Verizon spokesman Young declined to answer questions from Breitbart News.

Four million young Americans will join the workforce this year, but the federal government will also import 1.1 million legal immigrants, and allow an army of at least 2 million white-collar and blue-collar visa-workers to work U.S. jobs, alongside additional asylum-claiming migrants and at least 8 million illegal migrants.

Overall, the Washington-imposed economic policy of economic growth via immigration shifts wealth from young people towards older people by flooding the market with cheap white-collar and blue-collar foreign labor.

That flood of outside labor spikes profits and Wall Street values by cutting salaries for manual and skilled labor offered by blue-collar and white-collar employees. The policy also drives up real estate prices, widens wealth-gaps, reduces high-tech investment, increases state and local tax burdens, hurts kids’ schools and college education, pushes Americans away from high-tech careers, and sidelines at least 5 million marginalized Americans and their families, including many who are now struggling with opioid addictions.

Immigration also pulls investment and wealth away from heartland states because investment flows towards the large immigrant populations living in the coastal states.

https://www.breitbart.com/big-govern...u-s-companies/

Excellent article. The H1B program on its annual numbers comes across as inconsequential given the enormous excess immigration we are forced to deal with, but this article illustrates perfectly well the compounded and exponential size of the actual impact on Americans looking for good jobs of the H1B program, so the H1B program must be ended in its entirety along with most other visa programs.

wow, they dont even try to hide it

One of Trump's pre election promises was to raise or eliminate the "cap" on H1B salaries which would eliminate the incentive to hire H1-B over US citizens. It seems to be stuck in congress this needs to be pushed.

BTW, the Clintons have done very well financially with their associations with India..Just sayin. IMO

US committee raises minimum salary of H1B visa workers to $30,000; move to harm Indian IT professionals


A similar version of the bill needs to be passed by the Senate before it can be sent to the White House for US President Donald Trump to be signed into law.

BT Online Washington Last Updated: November 16, 2017 | 16:45 IST

Underlining a tough stand adopted by US President Donald Trump against Indian IT professions and software companies, a key Congressional committee in the United States on Thursday voted to pass a law that proposes to increase the minimum salary of H-1B visa holders from $60,000 to $90,000. The panel, however, proposed to impose a number of restrictions on the work visa popular among IT professionals from India. The bill was passed by the House Judiciary Committee during a markup hearing on Thursday morning.

The Protect and Grow American Jobs Act (HR 170), was introduced by Courts, Intellectual Property and the Internet Subcommittee Chairman Darrell Issa. The bill now heads to the full House for necessary action. A similar version of the bill needs to be passed by the Senate before it can be sent to the White House for US President Donald Trump to be signed into law. Pertinent that the Issue of foreign workers eating into American jobs has been at the forefront of Trump's agenda ever since he took up the top job at the White House in January 2017.

Though India has not taken a strong stand on the issue so far, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj in October had flagged the H1B visa issue as a "strong concern" during a meeting with a visiting US Congressional delegation in New Delhi. The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) on Tuesday also put out a report, saying that the Indian firms have created more than 113,000 jobs in the US and invested nearly USD 18 billion in the country. The CII report: 'Indian Roots, American Soil' also shows that Indian companies have also contributed $147 million towards corporate social responsibility and $588 million as research and development expenditures in the US.

Given the sharp differences that the Democratic and Republican lawmakers and the White House has on various aspects of immigration reform including H-1B, the Congressional passage of the bill and its becoming a law as of now appears to be a tall order. The bill prohibits H-1B dependent employers from replacing American workers with H-1B employees, there are no longer any exceptions. It also lengthens the no-layoff policy for H-1B dependent employers and their client companies for as long an H-1B employee works at the company, which means they cannot layoff equivalent US workers.

For H-1B dependent employers to be exempted from the requirement that US workers be recruited first, the Protect and Grow American Jobs Act dramatically increases the salary requirements for H-1B workers. "They must pay the lower of USD 135,000 which is indexed for inflation or the average wage for the occupation in the area of employment, but with a floor of USD 90,000," said a media release issued by the House Judiciary Committee.

"It also could disrupt the marketplace, threaten thousands of US jobs, and stifle US innovation by unfairly and arbitrarily targeting a handful of companies who used just 16 per cent of the new H-1B visas in FY 2016 while imposing no new requirements on the vast majority of companies that use the visas to do the same exact same things," Chandrashekhar said. Defending the passage of the bill, Congressman Issa said lawmakers have a responsibility to ensure that H-1B is not abused by those misusing it to outsource jobs and undercut American workers.

"Unfortunately, the loopholes left open in H-1B have allowed a small handful of companies to game the system and crowd out employers who need the limited slots available to bring in the best and brightest individuals from around the world," he said. "The Protect and Grow American Jobs Act is a common-sense update that will go a long way to protecting American workers while helping companies have better access to the talent they need to grow their businesses and create new jobs here in America," Issa said.

Congressman Bon Goodlatte, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said the immigration programmes must put American workers and nation's interests first, and "unfortunately" that is not the case currently with the H-1B visa programme. "The Protect and Grow American Jobs Act makes much-needed reforms to the H-1B programme to curtail abuse of the system and protect American workers," he said.

NASSCOM strongly disagrees with the US lawmakers. "Unfortunately, this legislation is being driven by myths, not reality. US government data show very significant shortages of high skill talent around the country. The data show that the high skill visa programmes are not a major cause of US unemployment, and IT specialists working on temporary visas are not cheap labour," said Chandrashekhar.

NASSCOM president R Chandrashekhar in a statement said that HR 170, as adopted by House Judiciary Committee, would harm US businesses and impose an extraordinary amount of bureaucratic red tape on a programme that contributes greatly to US prosperity.

According to the US Bureau of Labour Statistics, across the US economy, approximately 20 million people per year lose their jobs due to reasons not linked to hiring H-1B employees. Compared to that, the annual number of H-1Bs granted to the top 10 India-centric IT service companies in 2016 was only a tiny fraction of the US workforce, he said.

According to a study by the Pew Research Center, based on fiscal 2016 data from US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) data, for eight of the top 10 India-centric IT companies, the average salary for workers on H-1B visas was higher than the median salary for US citizens in computer and mathematical jobs, Chandrashekhar argued. "Employers who use the H-1B programme are highly regulated and scrutinised already, and NASSCOM member companies abide by all applicable laws and regulations. "According to the US government, the rate of compliance problems is very low, and the overwhelming majority of problems occur at American companies with fewer than 50 employees," he said. Chandrashekhar said NASSCOM continues to support efforts to root out any fraud or abuse in the H-1B system.

"Quite simply, our members do not deserve to be treated differently from their American or European counterparts," he said.

https://www.businesstoday.in/current...ry/264157.html

It seems like every time I deal with some SF Bay Area startup firm my calls get transferred to some Asian call center. Never fails. I have that happen on Just Answer, a company called Point, a medical firm doing unproven biogenetic digestive analysis----you name it, they always go to some Asian call center. No wonder Silicon Valley is rolling in the cash!

If the Hispanics don't end up taking over this country the Indians will. I have had some very seamy dealings with people---always from other countries-----damaging my actual financial future because they don't play by the rules. They play for themselves only.

I just got back from the coast, and I always stay at a motel that people from India own. They have been buying up local property on speculation, they had some illegals doing the room cleaning; this time they had some weird multi gender person at the font desk because they were gone. I was told besides going to India they also go to London. And this is the lowest cost place to stay I can find in that area.

In the 1800s people came to North America for LAND. Then they came to practice their skilled TRADE in the developing industries. Now they come primarily for one thing: MONEY! Capitalism, in its wild unethical form, is the big attraction to foreigners.